
The Best Cities Around the World to Celebrate Pride
Pride is more than just rainbows and parades.
Gold-domed St. Isaac’s Cathedral is one of St. Petersburg’s most recognizable, and most popular, attractions. The 19th-century Orthodox cathedral combines Renaissance, Neoclassical, and Baroque elements, so looks different from many other Russian churches. Rarely used for worship, it now contains an art museum.
Commissioned by Tsar Nicolas I in 1818, it took a full 40 years for French designer Auguste de Montferrand’s designs to be completed. The result was a very lavish building, with a 71-foot (22-meter) dome containing 220 pounds (100 kilograms) of gold. There are many ways to appreciate the beauty and grandeur of St. Isaac’s Cathedral: from the outside, where the gold dome can be seen on the skyline from far away; from the museum inside, which features detailed mosaics among other treasures; or from the colonnade around the drum of the dome, which can be reached via 250+ steps. While the cathedral can be visited independently, it is also a fixture on many St. Petersburg sightseeing tours, alongside other attractions like the Hermitage and the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood.
St. Isaac’s Cathedral is in central St. Petersburg, within easy walking distance of the Hermitage Museum, the Bronze Horseman statue, and the banks of the River Neva. The nearest metro station is Admiralteyskaya.
The cathedral is open from mid-morning until early evening every day, except Wednesdays. It’s open during the evenings in the summer. You can also attend regular choir or orchestra concerts in the evenings.
Another must-visit church in St. Petersburg is the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. The architectural style is completely different from that of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, and most other architecture in St. Petersburg, as it was inspired by medieval Rusian architecture. Despite resembling Moscow’s famous onion-domed St. Basil’s Cathedral, built in the mid-16th century, it’s nowhere near as old, being built in the 1880s after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.